Like me, the author is having trouble with the fact that 199 out of 200 applicants for every programming job can't write code at all. I repeat: they can't write any code whatsoever.

That's flat-out ridiculous.

Now to be fair there are some distortions in the statistical side of this. It makes sense that most of the people who apply will be terrible at programming, because all of the good programmers will have gotten jobs already. Even then, 199 out of 200?

The article refers to three interviewers who all noticed the same thing, so I'm reluctant to just say they were bad interviewers. Possible though, but it seems unbased to me.

The best explanation I've seen is here ( http://weblog.raganwald.com/2007/03/thank-you-for-writing-such-heartfelt.html ), where it states that most people who can program already have jobs and therefore the 199/200 are still looking for employment for a reason. Most programmers can program. The population of programming job applicants is not representative of programmers as a whole. Even then, a 0.5% passing rate?

As for the CompSci degrees, the only explanation I can think of there is they were programmers who came from the dot-com bubble, where degrees were plentiful and inversely, the graduates less qualified.